Observations of the World. Real and Surreal.

The Name Dilemma

Another post after another long wait… well, I keep surprising the readers, don’t I? Anyway, let me dive straight into the point — naming characters is hard. I am sure those of you who are parents would know what I am talking about.

The name has to be just right because if it isn’t the tides can turn on you and your character will be stuck with a crap name forever. And we all know what happens to people with crap names. They get bullied. Period.

Thankfully, after too many trips down Google’s Baby name’s pages and irritating my roommate as I bounced names off her every two seconds, I have named all my characters and they fit perfectly.

But that is not the hard part.

Recently I found out that Eoin Colfer (one of my favorite authors) has written the first book of a brand new series, W.A.R.P: The Reluctant Assassin, which is coming out on May 2013. Well, this piece of data just made me fly out of my chair and jiggle my bottom in delight because the book trailer promises an adventure as good as the Arthemis Fowl series… and then I braked mid-dance.

My character names are not inspired by Mr. Colfer’s books, they scream out my fangirl status! What else would you say if you found out that my protagonist was named Arthemis (an extra ‘h’ doesn’t hide my fascination with Artemis Fowl). Add to it the fact that I have named her mentor Eon (yes, a missing ‘i’ from Eoin works wonders here) and we have a crime scene on our hands.

Artemis Fowl: The Atlantis Complex (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s Artemis Fowl!!!!! Eeeeeeepppppp…… see that’s what I was talking about.

What ensued was a state of panic. Should I change the names of my characters? Should Arthemis become Aura? Should Eon become Cirke?

And then I realized the foolishness of my panic-attack. Big deal my characters are named that way. I am sure Mr. Colfer would be delighted to have a fan who loves his books, was inspired by them, and then ended up becoming a major author herself.

The case was finally closed when I remembered the time I was reading ‘Vampire Academy’ by Richelle Mead and came across a character named Mia Rinaldi who transported me out of the world of vampires and their gothicness and face-planted me into the pink-edged world of Princess Diaries. At least I have not openly showed my utter dislike for Meg Cabot by slutifying her popular and geeky princess Mia like Ms. Mead has done there. FYI, I like Meg Cabot (in case the last line confused you), her Mediator series is one of my all-time favorites.

The journey from Goth to Geek was fraught with headaches and vertigo.

So all’s well in the wicked world of writing now and I can get back to outlining Rage.

Signing Out.

-Ria

P.S. Do leave a comment if you think my character names are knee-deep in Shitland. Any suggestions will be welcome with open arms because I still have open slots for minor character names. And if you don’t have any suggestion… well, you can leave a comment anyway. I love it when you do. 🙂

P.P.S I have put in the book trailer of W.A.R.P below just in case you wanna know your future reading list options (only for those with a kid reigning supreme in their hearts because the series is for high school kids and lower).

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